Chaos All Around During Therapy Session

[FindingMyself88]

I'm sorry but I agree with @zeckster81. I will be starting EMDR this summer some time as soon as my T thinks I am ready. She said that it WILL cause some things to come up in-between sessions and thats why she wants to make sure I have plenty of coping skills and grounding skills first. Also, all the research I've done even says that EMDR does often cause more memories to come up in-between sessions.

So please do not think you are wrong. I think you need to listen to your gut about how unsafe it is. My Therapist said we would probably even bump up our sessions to twice a week when doing EMDR. We would do one session as EMDR, but the other session would be talking about whats coming up and how to deal with it. She wants me to feel absolutely safe with it, which seems like the exact opposite to your T. Also, I listened to a video from Francine Shapiro, the creator of EMDR, and she said it is important to feel safe, not triggered, between sessions even when thoughts and memories pop up and that it is the T's job to help their client maintain balance. She said when EMDR begins to make someone feel unsafe, it is being done wrong.

Please take care of yourself and follow your instincts. Healing is a difficult job and you deserve to have someone that is going to help you through it, not push you through it.

 

[ghotiff]

Although I think she has heard the different details of so many different traumas she seems to think they aren't that big of a deal

If you feel this, then its a red flag for me.

 

[BloomInWinter]

I would tell her that noise and other people are big triggers for you. My therapist's office has been working with her to soundproof her office sufficiently that I do not get my startle reflex triggered or I "check out" the rest of session.

Dogs are very perceptive and its possible that dog sensed your distress and went into protective mode. My dog seems to know when I can't handle noise and of course, he then barks to chase away any people even out in the street. I don't know that I would do ok with him doing it in therapy.

You have every right to ask for accommodations such as having shades drawn, or lights turned down low, or even that you meet elsewhere if needed.

Safety is the foundation of all trauma work. You get to decide what you need to feel safe.

 

[Leanne1]

@BloomInWinter
Yes, I have to agree with you about safety being important in trauma therapy, based on my experience of this last week. I have felt relatively safe so far. ( been in therapy since November) based on my experience last week, I feel very distressed to go back.

I have gone from starting to develop trust in my T to feeling afraid of her. It was as though, in my experience, she suddenly turned into a different person, who I didn't feel safe with. This is definitely something I could transfer onto her from my past, but even knowing that, I don't know how to not feel so scared to go back to her office.

When I was talking at one point, and she said something a sympathetic listener would say, I was thinking that she was just saying that so it would sound like she was listening and cared.

Also I view her agreeing with me about not wanting to become to dependent as her pushing me away. About her not wanting to care, or be close to me. I really brought it up to see how she feels. I'm not a needy type really, but am very careful not to push myself on people or ask for to much.

I don't know how to talk about it with her.

I think this change, along with the chaos of the last session, is because we were talking about an assault I experienced when I was 17. After already experiencing years of sexual abuse and violence, this experience really impacted me.

Most past experiences, at that time, were very contained. Just starting to experience a new freedom in getting away from my abusers, and then trusting to much, and being raped. My whole world crashed down. Everything from the past flooded back, and I felt like there was no escape from all of that. Suddenly more of the same was in my future and it was more than I could handle.

That was when I started to self harm.

So looking at this memory, and all of the chaos during that session happening I just left. It was all very dreamlike. That room and my T became dangerous. Oh man. I am going to really have to work to get back to where I was, if it's possible.

 

[BloomInWinter]

That makes perfect sense. But you don't need to work your way back to where you were. You have pushed forward into recognizing a point in time where dissociation took over. That's a huge step forward in self-awareness!

That point where our switch gets flipped - one minute, our therapist is ok, the next, they have taken on the characteristics of our abusers - is transference and re-experiencing.

Frightening and distressing, it is nevertheless a sign that at some level, the emotions that you couldn't allow through back then are perceived by your brain as being ok to allow to come forth now. There's nothing wrong with feeling them, other than they SUCK.

Keep comforting yourself and take good self-care to help stabilize. You seem to know and express very well what your "felt-sense" of the session was. You can still feel afraid of your therapist and go back, or not if you choose.

But I hope you go back and tell her. You have a chance to have a different response to this triggering than when it was happening in your life and you were unaware of it. She has a chance to learn how better to help you...and how not to allow that triggering to happen again. If she's worth her salt as a therapist, she'll handle it fine. If not, you'll have good information on which to base further decisions.

I've never regretting going back to therapy and telling how I felt afterwards, even at risk of losing their good will. It's our therapy. We get to choose how to do it. I've been through many similar episodes as you are describing and I am so glad I made the choice to move forward, though I gave myself permission to terminate therapy any time even if I had to get up and walk out on my therapist.

Not just because it helped me with that trauma. Really, the biggest change has been that I can now face apprehensive situations with potential conflicts with real trust in my ability to hold myself together, advocate for what I need, and get myself out of situations where I used to feel trapped.

Therapy is practice ground for out in the rest of our life. What we conquer in therapy frees us from similar situations outside of therapy.

You're being awfully hard on yourself just for having normal feelings and thoughts considering all you've been through. I hope you can have some compassion for yourself. You're doing a lot better than you think, I believe. What you are describing is tremendous growth for trauma survivors.

 

[Leanne1]

@BloomInWinter
Thank you for the reminder. I can be really hard on myself.

I was just so scared to all of a sudden fear someone I worked so hard to open up to and trust. ( my therapist)

I will talk to her next week.

 

[Sarah2732]

I just wanted to post and encourage you to listen to the clues your mind and body are giving you. I think so often we *know* what we need, somewhere, somehow, but it's the verbalizing it or even just finding the words to understand it in ourselves that is the hard part.

Her job is to provide what you need to heal. If the dog is a distraction for you, I hope you'll be able to tell her. If it helps at all, I thought I'd tell you that I have a friend who is an LPC and frequently takes her dog to work and she's absolutely ok with it when a client tells her they aren't okay with the dog being there.- She's not a bit offended, and understands not everyone is comforted by a dog. She arranges her client schedule and the days she brings the dog around each other.

Just to share my experience (don't hear any "should's" in this, because there aren't any! :) it's really just how therapy looked for me as an individual) ... I was very resistant to attach to my therapist and very scared of being dependent on her and a lot of the early work we did was actually to help me accept that it really is ok to "need" someone for awhile. For me, that was a really helpful thing to accept and created an environment where I could do the intensive therapy I needed.

 

[Leanne1]

@Sarah2732
Thanks for telling me a bit about your experience.

I have felt that I do "need" my therapist, at least for a little while. I have been looking for cues that it might be ok to attach to her a little bit, or depend on her. To do this is hard for me, but I feel that at this point I won't be able to do the work we are starting to do, without forming some sort of relationship.

I know there is structure and boundaries involved. I just get the feeling that she doesn't want me to depend on her, not even a little bit. She is busy, has a lot of clients, and really expects me to be fine in between sessions. Now I have agreed to going every 2 weeks instead of 1 because I feel that is what she wants.

I meet with her on Tuesday. I am going to ask to not do any emdr, and just talk about what has been going on for me. I am scared to go. Keep thinking of reasons to cancel. If I was just going for myself, I might, but I am also going so I can work through all of this so I can be a good mom to my little boy.

 

[ghotiff]

I just get the feeling that she doesn't want me to depend on her, not even a little bit. She is busy, has a lot of clients, and really expects me to be fine in between sessions

That you feel this way concerns me.

My ex-T expected me to be fine between appointments and it was a bit of a barrier for me, particularly since I was clearly NOT fine between appointments.

It was such an amazing moment for me when my new T said I could call her mobile (during office hours) if I needed to contact her. Although I don't expect to ever call her, that feeling that she is 'there' for me means so much.

 

[Sarah2732]

I meet with her on Tuesday. I am going to ask to not do any emdr, and just talk about what has been going on for me. I am scared to go. Keep thinking of reasons to cancel. If I was just going for myself, I might, but I am also going so I can work through all of this so I can be a good mom to my little boy.

It sounds like you do have a pretty good idea of, at least in general, what you need from the therapy relationship and I think it would be really brave and a great idea to go and talk to her about that like you mentioned. I think you are spot on in your sense that you need the relationship in order to be able to work on the hard stuff.

How long have you been meeting with her? Would it be very hard to book an appointment just to "meet and greet" another therapist or two and see if it felt better? It seems like the boundaries she's set for you aren't helpful for you (or for anyone working on trauma, IMO). I wonder sometimes if T's who really specialize as trauma therapists don't get overwhelmed by their client load much easier, which would make it so much harder to form the relationship you sound like you feel like you need.

It's hard to fight for yourself, believe me I know, but your son is such a great reason to listen to yourself, be honest with your T, and make a good decision for you. Therapy really does work with a good relationship with your T.

 

[Leanne1]

Thanks @ghotiff and @Sarah2732

Although it is hard for me to form relationships and trust them, I think I will at least try with my T.